The living room had been done in a sage green, the paint as new as the kitchen judging by the amount of nicks and scratches. The nude pictures were gone, the nails the only indication that the walls had once been adorned. The wood flooring appeared recently refinished. Decker asked Keric about it.

“If he did it, he didn’t ask my permission.”

“So he didn’t refinish the floors?”

“No, I say he did.” Keric shrugged. “I don’t complain, though. It looks nice.” The manager pointed to an area in the corner. “There are some scratches.”

“The movers probably did that.”

“Maybe.”

“Any idea why he’d refinish the floors?”

“No. He had good taste. Very…elegant.”

“He wasn’t a very elegant guy.”

Keric shrugged. “He was always okay with me. Anything else?”

“Did Mr. Banks leave a forwarding address?”

“Maybe with post office, not with me.”

Then there was no forwarding address. Decker had already called the local mail station while he was waiting for the manager to show up. “I’ll just take a quick peek around the rest of the apartment.”

“It will take long?”

“Not too long.” He checked out the bathrooms: the counters and cabinets were empty. The bedrooms had been painted beige and brown, respectively. Tidy except for nail holes in the walls. “Are you going to repaint these rooms?”

“They look nice and clean to me. If no one complains, I just leave it as it is.” Keric jingled the keys. “We go now?”

Decker eyed the wood in the bedrooms. Whereas the planks in the living room floor had been done in a central diamond pattern, these strips of oak had been arranged running board style. More important, the flooring was obviously original to the building and hadn’t been touched in a number of years: dull finish and dirt in the open cracks. Not that it looked bad. It acquired a patina of its own, but if Rudy was going to do the floors in one room, why not just do the entire apartment?

“You are done, no?” Keric asked again.

“In a minute.” Decker walked back into the living room, his eyes immediately focusing in on the baseboard and shoe molding. It was also semigloss and white in color. The electricity had been turned off. Although the room had some natural light, it wasn’t enough illumination for details.

Decker took out a penlight. He squatted down at a corner and shined it in the area between the shoe molding and the floor. Carefully he went around the room, inspecting each millimeter of the crack. When he was finished scrutinizing the room, he stood up and repeated the process in the kitchen. It took up more time than Keric would have liked.

“Now we are done?”